Dozens of mobile homes are being installed in tornado-ravaged communities throughout Western Massachusetts. Watch video
07.08.2011 | SPRINGFIELD - Two temporary house trailers on Searle Place are being used by the Jenkins family, as their home at right, was damaged in the June 1 tornado. SPRINGFIELD – Audrey Jenkins prefers to keeps the curtains on the northeastern side of her new home on Searle Place drawn tight against a haunting and painful view.
“It hurts to look out that way,” said Jenkins of their tornado-ravaged home which is slated to be torn down. “Nobody can go in there now. It is condemned.”
Jenkins lives with her husband, Walter Jenkins, his brother, Leon Jenkins, and their 5-year-old nephew,William, in one of two mobile homes that have been installed on the family property in wake of the June 1 tornado.
“It’s good because you are on your own property,” Jenkins said of their temporary, three-bedroom home.
She and other family members were home when the June 1 tornado ripped off their roof.
“It sounded like a roaring bear, an angry bear,” Jenkins recalled. “I am so thankful that God saved our lives.”
Pearlie Jenkins, the 76-year-old matriarch of the family, lives in a two-bedroom mobile home next door with a third son, Arthur.
07.08.2011 | SPRINGFIELD - Pearlie Jenkins sits in the living room of her temporary trailer on Searle Place. “I don’t mind it,” Pearlie Jenkins said one morning last week as she sat in her living room, watching an update on the Caylee Anthony case on CNN.
“I like it. It’s nice here,” said Arthur Jenkins. “I wish I had one of them.”
Dozens of similar mobile homes are being installed in tornado-ravaged communities throughout Western Massachusetts. Funded by private insurance, these structures are not the so-called FEMA trailers, provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which gained notoriety down south in wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Peter Judge, a spokesman for the state Emergency Management Agency, says the FEMA trailers are not winterized and therefore not ideal for use up here. “It’s highly unlikely,” Judge said of the possibility of such trailers being brought here to house tornado victims.
These mobile homes for this region’s tornado victims are more typically used by residents who are rebuilding fire-damaged properties. Once the necessary plumbing, electrical and temporary housing permits are obtained from the municipality in which they are located, they are tied in to the existing utilities.
They appear to be comfortable enough.
The Jenkins' mobile homes have wood paneling, front and rear doors, fully outfitted kitchens, washer and dryer and bathrooms that includes tub and shower.
“It’s small, but it’s home now,” Jenkins said, adding that it will likely remain home for another six to eight months while their old home is torn down and their new one is rebuilt.
“They are very well-built homes,” said Frank Ward, general manager of American Mobile Homes, of Weymouth, which has supplied the Jenkins’ two mobile homes
American, one of at least three major vendors of the mobile homes to this region, has already placed some 20 units in the region, including Monson, Brimfield and several in Sturbridge, Ward said.
Demand for the mobile homes is on the rise as residents rebuild their lives and homes.
“We have a list of people that are waiting,” said Mary Lomascolo, a book-keeper for Temporary Housing, which is associated with Prospect Builders, in East Longmeadow.
So far, Temporary Housing has placed about a dozen of the mobile homes in the tornado areas, with about a half-dozen more pending. Those on the list are typically waiting four to six weeks before they can get a trailer.
Lomascolo said it wasn’t long after the tornadoes ripped through that calls began coming in from those seeking the mobile homes. “We knew it was going to be hectic,” she said.
A third major supplier, Pope Housing, based in Kingston, N.H., has placed five of its mobile homes in Western Massachusetts with another “four or five” pending,” said Jerry Poisson, operations manager.
“I feel very good when I leave a customer’s housing and feel I have put a little stability back in their lives,” Poisson said.
Like the Jenkins family, Anne Whalen, of Judith Street in Springfield’s East Forest Park neighborhood, said she is thankful for the stability that her recently-delivered mobile home will provide.
“It’s a sense of normalcy,” said Whalen, whose home was essentially cut in half by a fallen oak tree and will have to be torn down.
Even so, reminders of the tornado remain everywhere, and it’s clear that they will linger here for a long time.
“It was just overwhelming,” said Whalen, who, immediately after the tornado, lived in a Enfield hotel near her workplace at Mass Mutual. “It’s still overwhelming now just to think of what happened.”
Whalen’s two-bedroom mobile home is set up much like the Jenkinses’ and came with two air conditioners, a loveseat and chair and a queen-sized bed. It also has wood paneling and its parquet wooden floor appears to be a close match to the flooring in her ruined home.
“Isn’t that ironic?” she said.